


Thrashing ill grinds on clouds

by Neigedens



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Tumblr Memes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neigedens/pseuds/Neigedens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk hits his head and meets a handsome stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thrashing ill grinds on clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Written for sonotcanon on Tumblr [here](http://onecatch.tumblr.com/post/32842984355/as-much-as-id-love-to-tell-you-all-about-spock). :*

"OK, yes," says the handsome stranger, holding his hands up in a position of surrender. "I sustain a lot of injuries to the noggin. What a hilariously ironic joke. Everyone laugh. Roll credits."

You look around; there's no one around except you and him. "That's...not what irony means? I don't think. I mean, yeah, my head's a bit foggy right now, but I'm not that confused."

"Oh really? No shit?" he snaps, crouching down on a rock and squinting at you in the dappled sunlight filtering down through the jungle canopy. "Take off your glasses. I need to see your eyes."

You do, and are surprised when he grabs you somewhat roughly by the chin. "Sorry," he says. He's about as tall as you, but built along thicker lines. When his fingers pressing your face make you shudder, he apologizes. You suspect in your gut that he's not cruel, he's just not used to touching people. "Does your head hurt?" he asks, letting go.

You nod, then regret it. "Yeah."

"What did you hit it on?"

You think about it; you definitely did hit it on something, because you remember a bright white supernova of pain and picking your glasses up off the ground in a daze. You unthinkingly knew they were your shades, but everything else hasn't come back so easily. "I don't remember."

He sighs. "Right. Of course you don't. I should--" Suddenly, about 20 different devices seem to ring at once. "Fuck!"

"What was that?"

"Someone's messaging me. Hold on." He takes out a phone in an emerald green cover. "Sorry, I should get this. It's, uh, you, technically, so--"

That answer really doesn't lessen your curiosity much. You try and scope out his conversation on the screen, but all you can really see is the phone's wallpaper and some premium blue lady side-boob. 

"Right," he says finally. The conversation is short and somewhat vindictive on his end. He pockets his phone with an eye roll. "The AR is as helpful as ever."

"Who?"

He groans. "God. This is unreal."

"Look, is there a reason you're not believing what I'm telling you?"

"Yes indeed! You're always yelling at me about not being taken in by every story people try and feed you, and then you come along and expect me to swallow this horse hockey, this premium high-grade bull plop, which, I should add, is the dumbest and most belabored of premises--"

"It's not belabored to me," you snap. "It's kind of my fucking _life_ at the moment, so."

He winces. "Sorry. Ok. The AR says we should go to Prospit."

"Where?"

"Up there. The gold moon. I'll show you." He grabs your arm and leads you to the base of a tree, climbing it easily and helping you when your foot stumbles on a branch. It's a small wonder, you think, that the guy's no stranger to head injuries. Still, you can't stop yourself from following him, especially when he pulls you up onto the branch and steadies himself, or maybe means to steady you, on your shoulder.

You don't need to be steadied; while everything else is unfamiliar to you, from the layout of the sky to the strange boy himself to even your own name, you've retained your muscle memory at least, and feel pretty sure on your feet, if not in your head. You pull yourself up by your arms. You don't need to be steadied, but you don't stop him when he grabs your arm, leans closer and points out the murky outlines of Skaia to you. Skaia is just visible, even though, according to Jake, it's the source of most of the light in the Incipisphere, which is where you are. Prospit is a golden spot off to the side, just visible in Skaia's corona. The light the two celestial bodies give off seems deeply wrong to you, for reasons you can't quite articulate. It's pretty, but definitely not familiar.

"The gold planet there is where we need to go," he says, squinting at you more now that you're fully in the light's glare. "That's where the white chess guys are from. Any of this ringing a bell?"

You shake your head, more slowly this time. 

"I suppose you would say that. The AR could tell me if you're faking or not, but he says he's not gonna tell me. He says I should be able to figure it out on my own." He shrugs.

You screw up your face; up here the light is blinding, even through your shades. "Well, you should believe me anyway, 'cause I'm telling the truth. But if this guy is holding out on you...I don't really know him or much about him, but he sounds like a total douche."

For some reason, that makes him laugh really hard. He almost falls off the branch. You catch him by the sleeve of his shirt, drag him back up next to you, and after that he's in a good enough mood to finally tell you his name.

"It's Jake," he says, leaning his head against the trunk of the tree and looking over the rims of his glasses at you. "So I guess we should get going."

"OK," you say. He's smiling at you, and suddenly it bothers you less that he doesn't believe you. You suppose your reaction to him might be muscle memory too; you get this heat in your stomach when he smiles at you like that, and when he lets you edge closer to him. "How are we getting there?" 

"Well." A shadow falls over his face. (Metaphorically, of course, because it's still bright as tits out.) His teeth, which are very prominent and impossible to hide when he smiles, are covered when he bites his top lip in thought. "Jane and Roxy are busy on Derse, and AR said he'd have them meet us there. Probably there's a transportalizer around here somewhere, but since I'm not the _elite Game Bro_ \--" derisive eye roll at this-- "like you and the AR, I have no idea where it is."

"Uh. Ok." You pause; he's expecting something from you here. "So where does that leave us?"

"I should say: you're going to have to fly us."

You stare. "Fly what?"

"What do you mean, fly what?" he asks, annoyed with you again. "Don't you remember rubbing in my face the fact that I'm still...what was it. Bound by the strictures of gravity or some such?"

"Obviously I don't," you say, getting testy again too.

"Well, you did. You're going to have to fly us there. It's not far. The AR says there's a healer chess guy on Prospit who can help us out."

"This is fucking ridiculous," you say. "You think _I'm_ the one who's making shit up? I can't remember jack about anything but you want me to believe that I'm Peter fucking Pan all of a sudden. It's ridiculous."

"Well, yeah, kinda," he admits. "But it's true. You have to fly us to Prospit, or nobody else will!"

You argue after that. You accuse him of dragging you up into the tree just to push you out, to empirically prove if you can or can't fly like he says. Sink or swim, except in this case it's float or sustain yet another significant head injury.

"Hey, that's not fair!" he says as he swings down from the branch. "I take head injuries very seriously."

"OK, that was sure a sentence that didn't mean much of anything," you say. He holds his hand out to help you down from the tree, but this time you avoid it. "Look, it's just stupid. I mean, you really expect me to believe that I can fly up to the sun like a piece of fucking garbage?"

"Uh, yeah? C'mon, bro! If I were you, I would believe me."

"That's not saying much. I don't think." You sit back down on the rock, shake your head, although you do it more carefully this time. "I'm starting to see what your mysterious douchebag friend was saying, if you'll swallow something like that."

His face gets dark and his brow furrows in anger this time. "Well it's _true_ , dammit!" He groans. "Man, I never thought I'd meet a Dirk that's even more impossible than AR-Dirk, or brobot-Dirk, or, god forbid, brain ghost boner-Dirk, but mysteriously dumb about shit-Dirk takes the fucking cake!"

"OK, none of that really meant anything either," you say, but you recognize Dirk as your name without much fuss. It feels right in a way the light from the sun (not a sun, actually), or the idea of flying into the stratosphere like a douche, does not.

He sighs. "Come on. Let's just...I dunno. How's your head feel?"

"Fine." But it really is pounding away at you, especially on the top, where you hit it. It didn't even break the skin, but it apparently did enough damage to you without needing to.

"You're lying. I think you have a concussion." It annoys you that thinking about this fact apparently cheers him up so much. His face lightens up. "Well, if you won't fly, I guess we need a new plan."

"And why can't you fly us to magical dream land again?"

He shrugs. "'Cause I didn't die."

" _What_?"

"You died. And I brought you back to life."

That shuts you up for awhile. You follow him mutely into the brush.

You two now have a destination, or you sort of do. He seems excited about something, anyway. "We need to find the transportalizer. We'll have an adventure and suss out the location of the blasted thing. That's more up my alley anyway."

"If you say so." The news that you're some sort of miracle resurrectee, on top of everything else, is making you reel, although that could be the head injury talking. For a while you follow him in silence through the jungle. This place is insanely bright, but the trees have wide dark-green leaves that give you two plenty of shade. 

You don't say anything until a little while later. "So, what the fuck am I? You brought me back to life, you said. Am I some sort of fallen angel? With great hair?"

"No, it's-- How do you even know what your hair looks like?" He shakes his head. "Whatever. What's even the point of me telling you the truth if you won't believe me?" He shrugs. You shrug. 

"Can't hurt," you say.

"Sure it can," he says quickly, then adds: "I mean...I know you don't remember this, but in the past you've told me a whole lot more fantastic things than I'm telling you now, and I always believed you."

"Well, maybe that's not saying much," you say, but you don't know why you said it. Out of habit, you suppose. For the first time, you're taken aback by the tone in his voice: not affronted, not fed-up, not even hurt. For the first time (that you can remember) you realize that he's believed you the entire time, even when he was putting up a front of skepticism, and there's an unspoken, resigned assumption in his voice that you won't believe him-- believe _in_ him-- the same way. Doing so is against your nature, which hasn't abandoned you even though your memories have.

Still. The fact that you've gleaned all this about him from just a few words, when you can't remember anything else about him. The fact that talking to him has kept you calm throughout your mnemonical crisis. That affects you, almost as much as that smile does.

You want to believe him, but you don't because it's too good to be true. _He_ seems too good to be true, and you don't even remember him. 

You keep these thoughts to yourself, though, and he leads you out of the underbrush, onto a cliff looking out onto a murky blue-green ocean. There are luminous white rock formations visible all along the coastline, and they glimmer sharply even with your shades on. You're on top of one, one of the taller ones from what you can tell.

"I think there are caves," he says. "At the bottom. Obviously we won't climb down here, in your condition. We'll go down to the beach and go from there, all right? Dirk?"

You're staring off the cliff, into the ocean. In the distance you can see the beach he's talking about. It would be easier to fly down from here. Hell, it would be easier just to fly up to the planet he pointed out to you earlier. You look up at...Prospit, was what he called it. And Skaia. They haven't moved the entire time you've been walking. Your shadows have stayed exactly the same. That feels wrong too. You turn back to him.

"If I did fly us," you say. "How do you know we could make it? Can you really just...take off, fly into the atmosphere?"

He shrugs. "I think so."

"But how do you know?"

"You told me," he says. "You used to do it all the time."

Well. You press your lips together into a straight line. "Right. And would you come with me?"

"What? Well. Yeah."

"How?"

"You'd just have to take me with you." He rubs the back of his neck, gives you the works again with that smile. "I brought you back to life, dude, I'm really...not going be that shy about holding your hand a little! I think you should take me with you, but I can stay here if you want. Dirk?"

You nod, and come to a decision. Hell, why the fuck not. "Right. Well. Here we go. Sink or swim, right?" You step forward and take a step off the cliff.

"Dirk!" He screams, almost dives after you. When you float back up towards him, he looks furious. "What the fuck are you doing? By god, man, are you trying to give me a damn heart attack?"

"You're the one who told me I can fly," you say, but you're feeling lighter now, and not just because you're literally floating at this point. "Why are you mad?"

"Well, I--I was worried, I guess," he says, looking embarrassed. "So you believe me now?"

You nod, and hold out your hand. "You coming?"

He takes your hand and steps off the edge of the cliff to just sort of...float alongside you. You're really not sure about this; you're not sure how you're floating, but you are, and he's not weighing you down. As long as you hold onto him, he's just along for the ride. It's weird, but he squeezes your hand. You wrap one of your legs around his to spread out his weight more, which isn't necessary but feels like it is anyway.

He looks down at your intertwined legs, and then back at you. "You must remember me now. Or you're starting to, right?"

He's smiling at you again. Possibly you're going to be leaving your stomach back on the ground on this planet when you take off like a fucking piece of gargbage for Skaia. "Some of it's coming back to me," you say, and fly higher.


End file.
